Hole-in-wall shop rolls out dream bikes

SANDPOINT — Larry Baggett’s journey into competitive biking started the day a fancy sports store in Colorado Springs wouldn’t bother to sell him a pair of cycling shoes. He was still a kid at the time — young, impressionable and looking for a shop that would take his passion for bicycles seriously

Baggett chanced upon just such a place when he poked his head into a shop door that, from the outside, was nothing special. Inside, however, was a long, dim room where a few incandescent bulbs spread their vague light through the spokes of hanging bikes. The scent of grease mingled with chain oil and WD-40 to create a perfume that pulled him deeper into the tangle of frames, wheels, tires and bike parts

“I was looking around this dark, dingy place with the smell of coffee coming from the back and I saw the guy who ran the place wearing a work apron,” Baggett recalled. “His hands were dirty, but he had a big smile on his face.

    “I thought, ‘This is the way a bike shop ought to be.’”

The boy became a “shop rat” and later apprenticed with the owner. He swept the floor, made the coffee, emptied the trash — and learned the trade. Despite working in exchange for bike parts, Baggett’s growing fascination with trying out the latest gear meant he never quite caught up, always owing the shop a few hundred hours of labor.

Decades later and now retired, he runs his own hole-in-the-wall cycling business in Sandpoint. Competitive Instincts Bike Shop is one of those “you kind of have to know where it is” places that sit secreted away until you happen upon them. Local cyclists, though, seem to have a built-in radar for the place, judging by the number of them who ride up to visit with the owner

“Can you take a look at this?” one of them asked after riding up to the half-open corral door that throws light onto the proprietor’s workbench. “It has a ‘clunk.’”

Baggett swept out and bent over the ailing bicycle, quickly assessing the problem and setting an appointment for a drop-off date. As he talked to the visitor, he tugged on cables, jiggled brake handles and tested the tire pressure with a thumb and forefinger, producing a bike pump and giving each tire some air when he found they were on the low side.

The rider, like many others who frequent Competitive Instincts, uses the bike as her main mode of transportation. And while the casual cyclist doesn’t represent Baggett’s primary customer base, he’s happy to help keep them on the road.

“When the country started out, cities were built for pedestrians and buggies and bicycles,” he said. “Once the automobile was mass-produced, those towns were immediately inundated. Anything you can do to get people out of their cars and onto a bike more often is a good thing for all of us.”

Eclipsing his role as a proponent of bike culture, though, is Baggett’s reputation as a builder of high-end, custom bicycles. His own cycling pedigree comes into play as he strives to combine traditional designs and classic looks with the latest in parts and technology

“That’s what I like doing — building custom bikes and playing around with different things,” the owner said. “It’s an art as much as it is a science. You’re making sure that form and function work hand-in-hand.”

The customers who find Competitive Instincts Bike Shop are looking for something that can’t be purchased right off the rack. They have reached a certain level of training where their mountain biking, road racing or competition as a triathlete requires the kind of edge that comes from the right equipment. Finding the right fit, according to the builder, is only part of the process. A more critical detail involves pinning down what constitutes the “right bike.”

A well-built custom bike personifies its rider, he explained. That’s why Baggett spends considerable time on the front end delving into the rider’s psyche

“When he or she walks in the door, there are probably a dozen ways you could go with a bike,” he said. “Do you ride for fun?  Do you race? If someone passes you on the trail, does it bother you?  Are you the kind of rider who can’t stand to have anyone in front of you?”

Modern bicycles can boast 18, 20 or 30 speeds, along with a host of new components that get increasingly more expensive as things become more customized

“That’s why, when someone comes in and says, ‘I want a really nice bike and money is no object’ I tell them, ‘You have no idea how much of an object it can be,’” Baggett said.

If bikes come in good, better and best, he added, his shop comes in at the high end of the upper category. An entry level custom bicycle — built from the frame up — will cost more than $2,000. On average, the bikes coming out of Baggett’s shop run between $4,000-$6,000, with highly customized cycles for professional athletes fetching $10,000 or more

Those competitors are often as fit as they can possibly be and have to rely on tiny improvements in gear to shave seconds of their race times

“It’s like the arms race, with every athlete looking for new equipment that will give them an edge,” said Baggett. “There’s an old saying: The right parts won’t win you a race, but they could lose it for you.”

The Tour de France has been around since 1903, but Americans only “discovered” the bicycle race when Lance Armstrong started famously sporting the yellow jersey that designates the rider with the fastest time on the 2,200-mile course. That discovery led to a wave of aspirational imagery that builders like Baggett must contend with

“Somebody might come in and say, ‘I want the same bike Lance Armstrong rides’ and I’ll say, ‘No, you don’t.’”

The builder then explains that Tour de France competitors are super-elite athletes riding bikes that are expressly made for one kind of riding, not to mention the fact that the wheels alone can cost $4,000 or more. From there, he goes on to tell the customer that he can put together a bicycle that captures exactly what they’re looking for, but makes more sense in terms of their riding style

“So you can look like a Tour de France racer, but you’re not going to be on a Tour de France bike,” Baggett said. “And you’ll be a lot happier with the outcome.”

The bike shop owner counts it as a plus that he’s retired and runs his business more for fun than for profit. His bookkeeper constantly encourages him to draft a business plan to maximize profit. In answer to that suggestion, he pulls out a grey binder and flips through page after page of photographs showing custom bikes that rolled out of his shop

“If you do this right, you’re not going to make a lot of money at it,” the builder said. “But look at all these cool bikes I get to build.”

Half the fun, for Baggett, is creating a constant succession of dream bikes and testing them out before handing them over. And even though he devotes his time to custom work, his opinion of bicycles in general — and the people who ride them — is very high

“The world is getting too noisy, too busy and too fast,” he said. “Riding a bicycle changes all that. The bike is pretty much the same as it was back in the late-1800s — a double-triangle frame, a couple of wheels, a handlebar, a crank and a chain. That’s it. And it’s a pretty elegant thing.”

Competitive Instincts Bike Shop is located at 610 S. Madison, next door to the Sandpoint Charter School. For information call: 255-2986